What is Customer Relationship Management - 顧客關係管理 (CRM)

Twenty-five years have passed since the relationship Management 關係管理concept was first mentioned in the literature by Berry (1983). In recent years, it has also become a key topic in leading marketing books and is approaching its maturity stage.

Due to the ease of information exchange with the development of internet communication tools, customers are now better educated and it means that they are more sophisticated. The globalization growth of a company brings with a greater competition. Marketers nowadays need to put more effort on sustaining good relationships with its target customers in order to increase company profile awareness, brand identity as well as reputation.

For a company, as we understand, the financial ground plays an important role, as it is the conventional bottom-line of running a business. The profit is the baseline before a company starts considering to meet the social and ecological responsibilities. Therefore, marketers invest a lot on customer relationship Management (CRM) - 顧客關係管理 in order to find the jewel customers from the zircons.


Defining CRM - 顧客關係管理
CRM - 顧客關係管理 is the core business strategy that integrates internal processes and functions, and external networks, to create and deliver value to targeted customers at a profit. It is grounded on high-quality customer data and enabled by IT.
~ by Francis Buttle, Customer Relationship Management Concepts and Tools, 2004

CRM- 顧客關係管理 is an approach to build and sustain a long-term business with customers. It is also defined as “a management approach that enables organizations to identify, attract and increase retention of profitable customers by managing relationships with them”.
~ by Ovum report quoted in CRM- the business case for CRM,1999

Why CRM - 顧客關係管理
CRM - 顧客關係管理 improves business performance by enhancing customer satisfaction and driving up customer loyalty. Profit is always the most critical concern to any company. Statistics shows that a 5% increase in retention rate can increase company profits by 60-100%. Based on Pareto’s rule, also known as the 80/20 rule, most of the company revenue comes from 20% of the customers, retaining these most profitable customers is the core of CRM.

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Overview of Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理

Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理 (CRM) is a customer-centric business strategy with the goal of maximizing profitability, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

Technologies that support this business purpose include the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information. Functions that support this business purpose include sales, marketing, customer service, training, professional development, performance management, human resource development, and compensation. Technology to support Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理initiatives must be integrated as part of an overall customer-centric strategy. Many CRM initiatives have failed because implementation was limited to software installation without alignment to a customer-centric strategy.

There are many aspects of Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理which were mistakenly thought to be capable of being implemented in isolation from each other.

From the outside of the organization, a customer experiences the business as one entity operating over extended periods of time. Thus piecemeal Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理 implementation can come across to the customer as unsynchronized where employees and web sites and services are acting independently of one another, yet together represent a common entity.

Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理 is the philosophy, policy and coordinating strategy connecting different players within an organization so as to coordinate their efforts in creating an overall valuable series of experiences, products and services for the customer.

The different players within the organization are in identifiable groups:

Customer Facing Operations - The people and the technology support of processes that affect a customer's experience at the frontline interface between the customer and the organization. This can include face to face, phone, IM, chat, email, web and combinations of all medium. Self-service kiosk and web self-service are doing the job of vocals and they belong here.

Internal Collaborative Functional Operations - The people and technology support of processes at the policy and back office which ultimately affect the activities of the Customer Facing Operations concerning the building and maintaining of customer relationships. This can include IT, billing, invoicing, maintenance, planning, marketing, advertising, finance, services planning and manufacturing.

External Collaboration functions - The people and technology support of processes supporting an organization and its cultivation of customer relationships that are affected by the organization's own relationship with suppliers/vendors and retail outlets/distributors. Some would also include industry cooperative networks, e.g. lobbying groups, trade associations. This is the external network foundation which supports the internal Operations and Customer facing Operations.

Customer Advocates and Experience Designers - Creative designers of customer experience that meet customer relationship goals of delivering value to the customer and profit to the organization (or desired outcomes and achievement of goals for non-profit and government organizations)

Performance Managers and Marketing Analysts - Designers of Key Performance Indicators and collectors of metrics and data so as to execute/implement marketing campaigns, call campaigns, Web strategy and keep the customer relationship activities on track. This would be the milestones and data that allow activities to be coordinated, that determine if the Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理 strategy is working in delivering ultimate outcomes of Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理activities: market share, numbers and types of customers, revenue, profitability, intellectual property concerning customers’ preferences.

Customer and Employee Surveyors and Analysts - Customer Relationships are both fact driven and impression driven - the quality of an interaction is as important as the information and outcome achieved, in determining whether the relationship is growing or shrinking in value to the participants.

Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理資料來源:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management

網民亞太區最多, 搜尋器Google是一哥

Comscore進行了一項全球搜尋器 (Search Enginee) 及使用者的調查，全球有超過7億5000萬名網民，當中亞太地區﹝包括中國、日本及印度﹞共2.58億人，佔全球首位。他們在八月份一個月內共進行了203億次網上搜尋，佔總用量三分之一。以人數計算，歐洲及北美居第二及第三位，分別有2.10億及2.06億人使用。

EditGrid Spreadsheet by user/anniehsh.

EditGrid Spreadsheet by user/anniehsh.

調查報告亦表示，在此7億多名網民中，他們在8月內透過搜尋器一共進行了610億次資料搜尋，當中有370億次使用Google的服務﹝包括310億次Google搜尋器 + 50億次Youtube﹞，佔總搜尋次數約六成。Yahoo!排名第二，但只有85億次，比Google少了逾4倍。排名第三的，刖是中國的百度﹝Baidu﹞，有32億多次。 可見現在的搜尋器服務市場，Google已是一個獨大。

EditGrid Spreadsheet by user/anniehsh.

數據來源: comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR)
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1802

Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理資料來源:
http://kencept.blogspot.com/2007/10/google.html